You²: A High-Velocity Formula For Multiplying Your Personal Effectiveness in Quantum Leaps - Book Report

Ani
Hi there, and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. Hey, Brian. Hello, Ani. I am excited today because we are starting new things.

Brian
That's right. New things.

Ani
This thing today is great. We are going to start giving you some book reports, and here's the tagline. We want to know what you think about it. Exactly. "We're going to read it so that you don't have to." What do you think about it? Let us know what you think about our little tagline.

Brian
I think we need to practice, though, actually getting it in sync, saying the tagline. Let's try it again. Like Hans and Franz. We're going to read it so you don't have to. That's exactly it.

Ani
I like that. Okay. Today is episode 83.

Brian
Episode 83. 83 today. Like Ani said, this is a new thing we're trying. We're going to do a book report, and this episode's book is...

Ani
You².

Brian
You².

Ani
Now, if you're listening and not watching, You² is written Y-O-U with the little two next to it on the top, like a math problem.

Brian
Yes, exactly. This is a book written by Price Pritchett, who has been around for a while. This dude's like 84.

Ani
I was going to say, are you calling him old?

Brian
No, well, he's 84 years old. He's been doing this work for a really, really long time.

Ani
Yeah, when did this book come out, by the way?

Brian
I don't even know. You're being honest with me. Let's look. But while you're looking it up, I will let you know the subtitle to the book of You². It's 'A High-Velocity Formula for Multiplying Your Personal Effectiveness in Quantum Leaps.' And so the theme of the book is to take a quantum leap.

Ani
Would you remind me the next time we do these book reports make sure I bring my glasses?

Brian
Oh, to figure out when it's written there? Yeah, exactly.

Ani
I can't see if there's a copyright on there.

Brian
Okay, we'll figure that out, and we'll let you know, everybody. It's been a little bit.

Ani
Price Pritchett, actually, was a person who was doing... Oh, here it is. I found it.

Brian
87. 87. Yeah.

Ani
Okay. Price Pritchett was a man who was doing organizational consulting. I think that's such a cool thing because back in 1987, he actually wrote a large amount of these tiny books. You² is really thin. You can read it in a day. Price Pritchett was doing organizational consulting, and he wrote a lot of these little books, and this one's his most famous.

Brian
The thing I like about these little books, like you said, Ani, is that you can read them in a day. They're easily digestible. The other thing I like, I like to leave them around the house.

Ani
So you can flip it.

Brian
You can flip it. I like to leave them around the house and just pick them up, and you can read each... Well, I guess it's a chapter. It's two pages, basically. The chapter has a specific point of the quantum leap or the You² method, if you will. You can just read it and then go off and do something else and come back and read another one and integrate it. It's one of the reasons I love these little books.

Ani
Yeah, me too. This is the book I pop in my backpack, especially when I'm working on something in particular like you. I can just pick it up and look at it when I'm sitting in my car at school carpool or something waiting for the kid. Just pick it up and read a little bit. It also really helps to... Some people want mantras or something. These little books, these books are great for those kinds of just quick hit ideas.

Brian
Yeah, exactly. Okay, so let's jump in and talk about You². We already said Price Pritchett, written in 1987, organizational consulting, and it's a high velocity formula for multiplying your personal effectiveness in quantum leaps. Right.

Ani
So not everybody's interested in making a quantum leap. It can sound sexy, but for some people, they're really looking at doing step-by-step change, and that is amazing if that's what you want, if you're looking at doing a quantum leap change, that's awesome, too. It's different. And knowing that's important. So I think we're going to follow a little framework here talking about the summary of the book. What was the next thing here? Summary of the content a little bit.

Brian
Can we also just talk about the idea of a quantum leap, where it came from as the way that Price Pritchett talks about it in here? When I hear the word quantum leap, I don't know if you remember or not, but actually in the '80s, there was a TV show, right? I think it was Scott Bacula.

Ani
Scott Bacula. He started in it. I was a little young for watching it, but I do remember my parents having it on sometimes. It had some funny things.

Brian
It was like a time traveler. He went back and had to make sure he'd change something, but not something else. I don't remember all the details of it.

Ani
That's what it was, the time travel thing, right? Yeah.

Brian
Here's the thing with a quantum leap. Price Pritchett talks about this in terms of quantum physics a little bit in the book, and just in a page. What a quantum leap is, it's when an electron, which is a subatomic particle that is orbiting around a nucleus of protons and neutrons when it changes its level of orbit. So some electrons are orbiting very close to that nucleus. Think about a planet, and you have moons going around a planet, and some moons are close to the planet, and other moons are farther away from the planet. The Saturn has multiple moons, I think, around it, right? So it maybe has 12 moons going around or something like that. Well, around every subatomic particle that has multiple electrons, they're in multiple orbits. And every orbit represents a different electromagnetic level of energy, different level of energy. So the idea is that the electron can jump to a higher orbit. The fascinating thing is that when quantum physicists watch electrons jump, you don't watch them move from one orbit to another. They actually disappear from a lower orbit and reappear in the higher orbit with no distinct way that they've done it.

Ani
That's exactly what it looks like.

Brian
It doesn't move. They don't watch it. Oh, look at it. It's moving to the higher orbit. Oh, look at it go. No, it just disappears, and then it reappears instantaneously at a higher orbit. That's what it looks like for- That's what a quantum leap actually is because you're going from one quantum level to another quantum level. That's why he talks about quantum leap in the book that way as a symbolic representation of what he's trying to help people do in their lives.

Ani
One of the things I was going to say was there's not science in this book, and You just gave what... I mean, I read the book more science than I read personally within the context of the book.

Brian
He didn't talk about that depth of science in the book. He just gave you that quick idea.

Ani
But I think that's important to the book report here is... This is not a science book. It's not talking about all the science. Brian just gave you- Very practical. Brian just gave you the science about what he talks about in the book, but this stuff and why it happens and how it happens isn't actually in the book. I think that's really important because for some people, they want to know the science. It's not in here. It's a super short book. It's an actionable guide. Price Pritchett wanted to write actionable guides. So that was a great little scientific background on what's actually not really in here to describe what it looks like. Human change looks the same way, basically. It's very cool.

Brian
All right, so let's do it. Let's dig in. What do we got, Ani?

Ani
Well, this is the key concept around You² is, How do you make a quantum leap? It's not a science book, it's a how-to action guide. One of the key concepts I really took away is that he's trying to impress upon the reader that a quantum leap is not about you working harder. Correct. A quantum leap, it's different than step by step. I think throughout the process of reading the book, you get to the end, that's one of the things I would really want a reader to take away as a key concept of the book. It's not step by step. A quantum leap is not harder. He starts out in the introduction telling a story about a fly that's trapped in a room and how the fly is trying to get out of the room through a closed window, and it's banging its head against the closed window repeatedly when the door is open and the fly could just fly out the door. I've helped so many people through the process of this quantum leap idea. That is exactly what it looks like, is the person's banging their head against a window. Actually, when I'm working with somebody, it's that moment that I'm excited for them because I know they're going to keep coaching with me, because we're on a program, I know the leap is coming really soon for them.

Ani
But it's not working harder. It's not hitting your head against the glass. That's not it. It's this, like what you said, it's disappearing and reappearing in the new vibrational frequency.

Brian
Yeah, exactly. What I love about that, the fly in the window story, Ani, is that the fly is so convinced that his freedom or their freedom is on the other side of that glass that they will die trying to prove that they can bust through the window when there's no way that they possibly can do that. Like you said, all they do is turn around the doors right behind them, and in 10 seconds, they could be out of the room and to their freedom. But they're so blinded by the window and that that's what they know, and they see the light, and that's where it is, and I'm going to go that way. Even though there's no absolute way that that can happen, they will die trying to do that.

Ani
So practically, this is trying to change your relationship with your partner, trying to change your relationship with your kids, trying to make more money, trying to scale and grow your business, trying to leave your job and go to a job. Anything that you might be trying to change in your life that you just feel like, Oh, why isn't this working? The Quantum Leap is about the doors behind you. Right. Yeah.

Brian
So if you're interested in, again, taking a quantum leap, this is a book that's going to help you do that. He's got some ideas as a part of what he calls his quantum leap method in the book to help you do that. There's features of the method.

Ani
Yeah. Again, if you're a person who likes the science or the background or all the stories that go along with it. I just read another book recently that was wonderfully written. It has these supportive stories, and it had a supportive research, and also an actionable guide, but it was long. And this is not that book. So if you're looking for all the supportive stories to show you examples, and you're looking for the research, this is not the book for you. It's a book for you if you want the real actionable guide. Like Brian said, each chapter is a page or two, and that's it.

Brian
Are we going to talk about a couple of the themes in some of these chapters?

Ani
Sure.

Brian
Does that make sense? Sure. What were some of your favorite... There's multiple chapters in here, but there are a couple of themes from each of these chapters that I thought were just compelling for me personally. Sure. What? I really like the... What was the one I really liked? I should have it already open.

Ani
You don't have it in your notes?

Brian
I actually have it here. It's one of them. Focus on the ends. Focus on the ends rather than the means. Focus on the ends rather than the means. When you're taking a quantum leap, the idea is that you need to know where you want to land, but you need to let go of the need to know how you're going to actually get there, get from A to B. The electron, electron disappears in one place, it reappears in another place, it's not concerned with what happens in between. It just knows it's going to land in that place. He just has a couple of little quotes from this particular chapter, when I loved what he said, he said, "A quantum leap is a move you're already prepared to make. You just haven't done it yet." When you're ready to make that quantum leap, actually, you've been prepared to make this leap probably for some time. You maybe have been waiting to make the leap. Maybe you've been waiting to see a sign to make the leap. You're already prepared to make the leap. You just haven't done it yet. When you make the leap, actually, what needs to happen between the disappearing and the reappearing will happen automatically.

Ani
He makes that point a few times throughout the book, impressing upon the reader that the reason the leap hasn't happened is because you're just not getting out of the way.

Brian
Yeah, right.

Ani
It's right there.

Brian
Was there a specific chapter that you really liked? You really resonated with?

Ani
One of the themes that I really resonated with was the idea about being okay with messy. It comes up for all of my clients. Because when things start to get messy, their subconscious mind tells them that they're doing something wrong or it shouldn't be like this or this is too painful. I don't want to keep going like this. The subconscious, really, for a lot of my clients, just gets so excited to jump in and sabotage the conscious mind to make sure this person doesn't change because messiness is so confronting to my clients. And he just talks about how it's just a part of the process. It's like the middle is messy. It's just a part of it.

Brian
It's actually a necessary part of it. I think the point he makes, too, is that if you're not experiencing messy, you're actually probably not changing anything. Because if you know what it's going to be like through the process of the disappearing and the reappearing, you've done it before already. Correct. You've already done it in your life. You can't create a quantum leap by doing what you've done before. By definition, a quantum leap requires that you do something that you've never done before.

Ani
You don't know how it is supposed to look.

Brian
A lot of what he talks about, a lot of these themes, what they do is they set up the environment to be able to have a spontaneous quantum leap occur. That's, I think, an interesting little twist on it, too, because we think that we need to make something happen. How often have we been told, I need to make it happen. You need to make it happen. You need to go do things and make it happen. What he's saying, essentially, is that when you set up the environment in the right way, the quantum leap actually happens by itself.

Ani
Totally. One of my favorite quotes is, "Everything looks like failure in the middle. You can't bake a cake without getting the kitchen messy. Halfway through a surgery, it looks like the murder has been happening in the OR." But it's true.

Brian
Yeah, totally.

Ani
But I would pretty likely hang my hat on just thinking about it for 10 seconds here. That the messiness is the number one thing that makes my clients turn around and quit.

Brian
Yeah. Because we've been, again, because we've been conditioned or taught that it needs to be predictable and safe. We have to know what you're doing. Do you know what you're doing? What are you doing? We get that question to us so much when we're in a strange place, we're trying to do something new, and it can be very confronting. I've been asked that before when I'm trying something new, I'm trying to grow, expand, and people in my life are like, What are you doing? Do you know what you're doing? I'm like, I really don't know what I'm doing. You really don't know what you're doing? It's very confronting.

Ani
Yeah, especially if there's money behind it and people on board with you and all of that stuff. I think that subconsciously, there's a huge fear of humiliation.

Brian
Oh, yeah. Right. So that's that whole messiness brings all that up.

Ani
Yeah. What if this fails? And the chapter I was just reading from, I believe, was called Risk Failures.

Brian
It's actually called Seeking Failures. Seeking Failures. Thank you. So part of his method is that you seek failure. Actively seek to fail.

Ani
And he starts by saying quantum leaps demand a willingness to make mistakes. And I read that and was like, Yeah, okay. Well, I'm not afraid to make mistakes, but it's the failure, seeking failure, actually. That is a little bit, I think, more confronting for people. But what you were talking about, it's not just the failure, it's the what if I look like a complete idiot? Because in order to make a quantum leap, we do have to adopt a new belief system. And it's a very different belief system than most people are walking around with. To believe in ourselves, to believe in a quantum leap is a really different belief system than most people have. Most people have these step by step, work hard mentality. And so we risk humiliation by putting ourselves out there in the middle. It looks like a mess. And us saying, I know this is going to work out. One of the things he says is, not quoting directly, betting on ourselves. We bet against ourselves, but risk betting on yourself. Take that risk.

Brian
So when you're talking about beliefs, one of his themes in here is a chapter called Suspend Disbelief. Suspend Disbelief.

Ani
That's the quote I was just looking for there.

Brian
What he says in here, he says, "If you want to be skeptical of some ideas that truly deserve to be called into question, challenge the thoughts and beliefs that have argued against your taking a quantum leap. Put those old inhibiting ideas to the test by going for it with everything you've got. If you must doubt something, doubt your limits." Right. Yeah. So it's such a powerful idea around, again, suspending that sense of disbelief. Because we do have to change something. What if we actually change rather than buying into our limits? What if we actually suspended our disbelief and doubted our limits?

Ani
100%. Wow. I think that's one of the biggest things people are really working on when they're trying to change their situations, manifest a new reality, whatever it is, work towards a goal. I think one of the number one things that I feel like the Somatic Coaching Academy coaching does really well is helps people to get to the bottom of that question that people ask themselves, why isn't it working? What's wrong with me? Because we have methodologies that actually tell a person exactly where that question is coming from so you never have to ask it again. But just because you do that process with one of the coaches doesn't mean that it's not going to come up for you again unless you challenge it and really change how you're asking the question. When you hear it come up, I already know the answer to that. I'm not asking the right question. Then we can start to, instead of buying into our limits, because I think most people are walking around buying into their limits.

Brian
Defending our limitations.

Ani
Defending our limitations all the time.

Brian
Defending our limitations. This is such a powerful, powerful work. I remember when I first read this book, I don't know, over a decade ago. It was like I was getting slapped in the face every other sentence that I read. I'm like, Oh, It was great. It was like an intellectual waking up, like flashing cold water on me. It took me a little while afterwards to really take those entry opportunities and really go in deep and start to rewire, create disconnections within myself, reconnection with myself, in order actually to then manifest a different result that I was looking for. To your point, Ani, this is great, I think a great intellectual practice. This book is really awesome. There's so many great themes in here. Then when you understand how to ask deeper questions based on what's coming up in this book, then that change really starts to happen internally for people.

Ani
When I first read this book, I didn't get it. I didn't get. After I was really steeped in the sensory work, then I could read this book and use it more as a guide. I don't think it's a beginner book, honestly. I think it's a more intermediate, more advanced book for people who have been working with change and manifestation and things like that in their lives for a little bit. They already have some chops, personally. What do you think?

Brian
Well, so I think when you say beginner-intermediate. I think it's probably not a book for someone who believes that their beliefs are who they are. I think it's not a book for someone who is not aware that they are not their thoughts, they are not their emotions, they are not their ideas, they are not their beliefs, all those kinds of things. I think it's not a book for people who don't have that sense of distance or witnessing capacity. So I think when you say beginner, yeah, I would agree there. I think for people who have probably been practicing some meditation and doing those sorts of things and creating a little bit of distance between them and themselves, then it's a great entry point into some more... Let me think. Some deeper mindset work and mindset practices at an intellectual level. And then I think it's a great entry into deeper somatic practices as well.

Ani
Why do you think it's a good entry point into deeper somatic practices?

Brian
Well, because I think when you have a concept around how things change, just change methodologies in general, because we've done a bunch of podcasts on basically change processes occur in four parts. The "become aware, decode, modifying, and reframe". Any change process is going to include those four parts. When you have a framework for that, then I think it creates a scaffolding for the internal work. Otherwise, I think if you do a lot of somatic work without some type of scaffolding externally, it can get very lost internally. It can feel like you're just wandering around in there. You don't really have, I'm not going to say boundaries, but where the scaffolding is. You don't have that scaffolding to come back out and understand what's happening internally. That's why I think it's probably a really good setup to do some somatic practices with having some intellectual scaffolding around it. I think this is a good book for that.

Ani
It's a great mindset book. If you're a person who's really trying to work on mindset, it's specifically to change something in your life in a big way. Yeah.

Brian
Yeah, for sure. There's one more little thing I just want to bring up, too. One of his little themes here is choose a different set of risks. Choose a different set of risks. There's a great little quote in here that he says, "When you're making a quantum leap, you're not gambling. You're not gambling. It's not a crapshoot. You simply move on an opportunity you've been ignoring." Kind of like the fly, right? The opportunity is behind the fly. It's not like the fly is taking a risk by going out the door. You're just using an opportunity that's already been there, thing. He says, "You abandon your excuses. You reframe the problem. You take a completely different chance. This isn't a case of taking a big chance." This is a cool part. "It's a matter of giving yourself a big chance." I really liked that. I really like that little twist on those words there. Not like I'm taking a chance. I'm actually giving myself a chance to become the person that I really want to become.

Ani
For me, that is because of the framework around opportunities. But when I conceptualize it, because it's different than when we think we've got to change and everything's coming from us, and I've got to do step by step, and I've got to do all the work. But when looking for opportunity and the co-collaboration of the universe with what we're trying to achieve, who we're trying to be, what we're trying to do, actually a large part of us reaching our goals is looking for opportunities. And like you said, the opportunities are there. We just didn't see it. But in order for us to see the opportunity and then act on the opportunity, we have to take a chance on ourselves.

Brian
Yes, exactly. One more important theme, I think, from the book, too, is he has a little chapter, I think it's called Fall in Love. And it's about being passionate with what you're doing. So passion just all by itself without direction is just like a forest fire thing. It'll just burn everywhere, and we won't have direction or a lot of purpose behind it. Of course, a sense of purpose without passion doesn't help someone have the fuel to jump that quantum leap, right? Because the quantum leap, you have to have enough fuel and energy to jump. As we're going through the messy parts, as we're going through the messy middle, what's going to help us to get from one side of that mess to the other? What it is is passion and love for whatever it is that we're doing. That's the only thing oftentimes that gets us through the really messy, difficult, hard, trying parts of our life. Wouldn't you agree?

Ani
I would agree 100%. If you're listening to this and you're feeling down in yourself because you have a hard time with that, I want to tell you, first of all, I personally can relate. A lot of my clients can relate. And so what we do is we start with the body and working on helping you to be a vessel, be a body who can create and hold and channel charge. Because we... A lot of people just don't have a lot of energy, Brian. And it's really hard to find your passion, follow your passion, do your passion when you don't have enough energy going through your body.

Brian
It's tough.

Ani
And that's where you start is start with generating and being a person who has enough energy and passion happens automatically. It's been my experience after that. But that's one of the reasons I think somatics is so important, core centering and practices like that. Because if you're listening to this and you're like, God, but I don't have passion. I just blah. That's how I feel. I get it. I used to be that person, too. But it doesn't mean you're broken. It's like if your cell phone was dead, you don't look at your cell phone and shame your cell phone. But we do that for us. If your cell phone's dead, you plug it in. We can do that for ourselves, too. Yeah.

Brian
With somatic practice. Of course, the soul's agenda work is a huge part of that, too.

Ani
For sure. But you need enough energy moving through your system before you can really start to anchor in on some of those key things. Yeah, exactly.

Brian
Yeah. Again, I think the somatic work and the somatic stuff paired along with some of the concepts and ideas in this book are what get you the quantum leap. Because this is like... The book is like a roadmap in a lot of ways to set up all the situations to have that quantum leap. I think the somatic work is the fuel to make it happen. It's like the alchemical, transformational fuel. It's the fire. Because you could be doing alchemy, even creating soup. Soup is technically alchemy. Because you can have a pot of water and you throw a bunch of vegetables in there, throw in some raw carrots and raw celery and raw onions. Now, if that pot of water sits on the stove and you never turn the stove on, you got a pot of water with a bunch of vegetables in it. What does it become? Nothing. Nothing happens. Compost. Compost. But if you put heat under it, then all those vegetables turn into this amazing food source that's full of nutrients and energy and heal, all those kinds of things. So I see this book as like it's all the ingredients in the pot waiting for that somatic work to fuel the fire and then to transform it into something amazing.

Ani
Yeah, I agree with you. And to help work through all the resistance that comes up in our subconscious when the quantum leaps right there. We're not taking advantage of it yet. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Brian
For sure. All right. What else we have for our book report, Ani, anything else?

Ani
Well, it sounds like we'd recommend this book. For sure, yeah. Give it an A.

Brian
I'd give it an A. Yeah, I think for me, it's an important one. I hadn't read it in a little while before preparing for our book report, but I always keep it handy, know where it is, love to pull it out, read some chapters from it. I think it's a great one to have on your bedside stand or, I hate to say, in your bathroom, even. If you just want to grab a quick read in there, have it handy, throw it in your travel bag, pull it out, and just keep nurturing these ideas internally. It's really a fantastic book for that.

Ani
Yeah, I agree. It's a great one. We said we'd read it so that you don't have to, but you might want to grab it. All right. Well, this was fun, Brian. I really look forward to our next one. I think I better get started on it because something tells me it's going to be a lot longer than this one.

Brian
Yeah, I think we have a thicker one coming up next for everybody. So hopefully you enjoyed the book report. If so, give us a shout out. Send us some notes, emails, phone calls, whatever in the chat, however it works nowadays. Just let us know how you feel about it. Ask us the questions. Thanks for being here with us on the podcast this week, and we look forward to seeing you again next week.